Analysis of Money No Mystery

Analysis of Money No Mystery

Thomas Allen

    The following is an analysis of Money No Mystery: Mastery by Monopoly by Arnold Leese [1938] (Hollywood, California: Sons of Liberty). Leese  (1878–1956) was a British fascist politician. What is proposed in his book is a fascist monetary system. He discusses some Jewish issues that are not addressed since they are beyond the scope and objective of this article. His words and my paraphrases or summaries of his words, I have italicized. My commentary is in roman letters. I have provided references to pages in his book and have enclosed them in parentheses.
    Mr. Leese comments on gold’s suitability for money. One property that makes gold suitable for money is its rarity (p. 3.). Rarity is an important characteristic for money if it is not too rare. What makes gold the most suitable metal for money is its flow-to-stock ratio. Annually, newly mined gold accounts for about 2 percent of the above ground stock of gold available for monetary use. Thus, newly mined gold does not have much effect on the value of gold.
    Mr. Leese remarks that irredeemable paper money had reached “a stage of general stability” (p. 3.). That may have been true during the late 1930s when he wrote. However, that stability was lost during World War II and the decades that followed.
    Like all fiat money advocates, Mr. Leese believes that governmental fiat gives money its value. Government can give otherwise worthless pieces of paper great value by declaring them legal tender and by that eliminate any need for gold backing (p. 3.). If governmental fiat can give money value, bimetallism would have worked. Gold and silver would have exchanged at the same value at the ratio decreed by the government. (Presumably, they would exchange at the same value even if various countries had radically different ratios.) If government fiat and legal-tender laws gave money its value, a $10 U.S. note would have had the same purchasing power as a $10 gold coin in the United States between 1862 and 1879. Instead U.S. notes traded at a discount to gold until they became redeemable on demand in gold.
    Mr. Leese claims, “No one inside this country [Great Britain] cared a scrap whether the legalised paper money was convertible or not into gold; he didn’t want gold; he wanted goods, and got them, through the scraps of paper legalised by the State as National Money” (p. 3.). That may be true. Only a miser wants money because it is money regardless of form. Most people want money so that they can trade it or invest it now or some time in the future. Convertibility into gold serves as a regulator of credit, paper money, and keeps it within proper bounds. If the government or banks are issuing too much paper money or other types of credit money, people will redeem the excess and halt the expansion. Gold keeps the monetary system honest and thwarts the expansionist programs of statists, which is why fascists and other statists hate it.
    Mr. Leese has a better understanding of the gold standard than most post-World-War-II writers, including proponents of the gold standard. He knew that the British pound was the value of 113 grains of gold (p. 4).
    Like most opponents of the gold standard, Mr. Leese declares, “Few people wanted to do this [exchange bank note for gold], because gold has limited functions in general utility; you can’t eat it, drink it, make clothes of it or even flirt with it; before you can make use of it, you have to exchange it for something you want” (p. 4). Thus, he presents one of the most absurd arguments that opponents of gold give. One can eat and wear gold. However, such an argument against gold is stupid and is intended to deceive. The same thing can be said about paper fiat money and even more so about its electronic equivalent. How does one eat, drink, and wear electrons, which make up the bulk of today’s money, flowing through some unknown computer at some unknown location?
    Mr. Leese makes an error common to most opponents and proponents of the gold standard. He asserts that if all paper money is not fully backed by gold, a true gold standard does not exist (p. 4.). The true gold standard does not require all paper money and other forms of market-generated credit money to be backed by gold. Bank credit money (bank notes and checkbook money) can also be backed by commercial money, real bills of exchange, which are themselves a form of market-generated credit money — the real bills doctrine.
    According to Mr. Leese, the international gold standard leads to people and countries attempting to corner gold to “become masters of the International Industrial situation.” Jews were the primary people who cornered gold. By cornering gold, Jews gain control of fixing the rate of interest (p. 4-5). Where the real bills doctrine operates, many financial transactions are with commercial money — not with gold. The propensity of consumers to buy fixes the discount rate of bills of exchange, which is not really interest — not the hoarders of gold. Hoarders of gold have much less power than their opponents give them. (A more detail discussion on hoarding gold is given in “Is Gold Too Easy to Manipulate?”)  As Jews control most of the paper money issued today through central bank operations, abandoning the gold standard for fiat paper money does not eliminate this issue. It does not assuage Leese’s problem of Jewish control of the monetary system. (Perhaps this is why the Protocols of Zion advocates abandoning the gold standard in favor of fiat paper money [v.i.].)
    Mr. Leese writes, “The Financier can, by using his control of Gold to expand or contract the volume of Money (currency or credit) in circulation, create boom or slump in Britain” (p. 5.). As post World-War-II history shows, the financier can more easily expand and contract the volume of paper money. He can expand the money supply far greater under today’s monetary system than he could under the gold standard. Thus, when the inevitable slump comes, it is more severe or last much longer than it would have under the gold standard.
    Like most opponents of the gold standard, Mr. Leese asserts that gold cannot “supply the industrial need for National Money” (p. 5). As I show in “There Is Enough Gold,” enough gold exists to accommodate world commerce several times over when accompanied by the proper credit system, the real bills doctrine. Enough gold was available in 2004 to accommodate 3.8 times the gross world product of 2007 without fractionalization of gold.
    Mr. Leese discusses Britain’s return to the gold standard following World War I (pp. 6-7).
    Mr. Leese writes, “OUR National Money must be divorced from its association with Gold” (p. 8). This part of his proposal has been achieved. In 1971 when President Nixon ended the gold exchange standard, Bretton Wood system, gold ceased any formal role in the world’s monetary systems.
    Mr. Leese states that countries (Great Britain) should pay for imports with domestic paper money that can only be exchanged for goods and services in the importing country (p. 8). To some degree, bills of exchange serve this purpose. The world is in the process of achieving the intent of his proposal by abandoning the U.S. dollar standard that has been in place since World War II. However, his proposal seems to require country A to buy from country B the value of products that it sells to country B. Such an arrangement would greatly hamper foreign trade.
    Mr. Leese recognizes the need to control the amount of money issued (p. 8). He does not offer any mechanism for doing this other than trusting politicians and bureaucrats. Thus, politicians and bureaucrats would have to act contrary to their nature by not seeking to increase their prestige, power, and wealth.
    Mr. Leese discusses how the practices of lending for interest came to Great Britain and the adverse effects of interest (pp. 9-12). Under fascism, interest on foreign loans belong to the people of the country as a whole and not to the individuals who lend the money abroad (p. 11). By “people as a whole” he probably means the government — at least that is what most statists mean. However, the government is not the people as a whole. It has never been and never will be. It is the small group of people controlling it. If the people as a whole are to receive the interest paid on foreign loans, some mechanism needs to be in place to divide that interest among the individuals of the country without the government getting part of it.
    Mr. Leese opposes the Social Credit scheme (p. 12). I discuss the flaws of Social “Credits in Analysis of Richard Cook’s Monetary Reforms.”
    Mr. Leese presents the monetary reforms of the Imperial Fascist League (pp. 12-15). A “Department of Issue is established to control absolutely the issue of currency and credit” (p. 13). Its objectives are:
    (1) Gradually inflate money and credit until the price level of commodities are raised to the level reached at the end of World War I (p. 13).
    (2) After achieving item 1 and in accordance with item 3, stabilize the purchasing power of money so that it becomes as fixed as the yard (meter), pint (liter), and pound (gram) and no longer varies; expand and contract the money supply to maintain a stable level of a general-price index (p. 13).
    (3) Adjust currency and credit until production is sufficient to satisfy the needs of the country and its exportation overseas (p. 13).
    (4) Retire gradually all external and internal interest-bearing government securities with non-interest bearing currency (pp. 13-14), i.e., with non-interest bearing government notes or central bank notes that function like government notes.
    (5) Adjust gradually “to the new values by limiting currency inflation, in the early stages, to State disbursements” (p. 14), i.e., the government gets the new money first before it loses value.
    (6) Distribute equitably credit inflation to agriculture and industry (p. 14).
    (7) Balance imports and exports by tariffs, embargoes, and trade packs that enforce equality in exchange value (p. 14). The trade issue is discussed above.
    Mr. Leese does not propose governmental ownership of banking. However, banks are stripped of their ability to create money via lending. That is, he advocates 100‒percent reserve banking. The government introduces new money by buying government securities and cancelling them and with low-interest loans. Only the government can lend money for mortgages, which are lent through deposit banks. The government fixes all bank interest rates (pp. 14-15).
    His proposal has so many flaws, one knows hardly where to begin. His system depends on the wisdom and integrity of politicians and bureaucrats. If that were not enough, his proposal also depends on them be omniscient. Governments have attempted items 1, 2, and 3. So far they have all failed.
    Moreover, all price indexes are flawed. They always over count some items and under count others. As people’s tastes constantly change, price indexes need to be revised often to account for changing tastes. Also, changes in technology affect quality and cost as well as offering new items not in the index. These changes need to be considered. An ever-changing price index makes comparing the cost of living over an extended time questionable. Furthermore, governmentally generated price indexes are subjected to political consideration. Politicians like to conceal inflation, so they adjust price indexes to hide the real cost of living.
    Most countries can achieve item 4, if so desired, by having their central banks buy all their securities. To keep such action from resulting in massive inflation,  if not hyperinflation, would require large-scale restraint of the monetary and banking system.
    When governments fix interest rates, they drive high-risk borrowers to the black market (loan sharks) for loans. To propose involving the government in the mortgage and lending markets is fuel for corruption and disaster. Governmental intervention in the mortgage and lending markets was a major contributor to the crash of 2008. When governments become involved in economic activities, politics usually trump economics.
    A great irony of Mr. Leese’s fascist proposal of replacing the gold standard with fiat paper money is that the Jewish Protocols of Zion has the same proposal. The Jewish proposal is set out in Protocol 20:

        The present issue of money in general does not correspond with the requirements per head, and cannot therefore satisfy all the needs of the workers. The issue of money ought to correspond with the growth of population and thereby children also must absolutely be reckoned as consumers of currency from the day of their birth. The revision of issue is a material question for the whole world.
        You are aware that the gold standard has been the ruin of the States which adopted it, for it has not been able to satisfy the demands for money, the more so that we [Jews] have removed gold from circulation as far as possible.
        With us [Jews] the standard that must be introduced is the cost of working-man power, whether it be reckoned in paper or in wood. We shall make the issue of money in accordance with the normal requirements of each subject, adding to the quantity with every birth and subtracting with every death.[1]

The two proposals merely disagree in the criteria to use in deciding how much money the government needs to inject into the economy. Was Mr. Leese an agent of the Jews?
    Mr. Leese’s proposal fails to achieve his purported goal. It does not make the monetary system or economy better — at least not in the long run. However, it greatly increases the power of the government, i.e., those who actually control the government, over the economy and the people. As such control is a goal of fascism, Mr. Leese’s proposal does successfully achieve that fascist goal.

Endnote
1. Protocol of the Learned Elders of Zion, ed. Sergyel Nilus, trans. Victor E. Marsden (1905, 1922), p. 16.

Copyright © 2015 by Thomas Coley Allen.

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The Civil Rights Movement Is a Communist Movement -- Part 3

Martin Luther King 

Thomas Allen

[Editor's note: Footnotes in the original are omitted.]
    In 1955 Rosa Parks, a Negro and a Communist party activist,[101] began what became the Montgomery boycott when she refused to move to the back of a bus. She worked for the NAACP and had been instructed in agitation at the communist Highlander Folk School (HFS). Thus, Parks was not a simple seamstress; she was a communist operative. After deliberately violating the Montgomery bus ordinance, she was arrested and fined. As a result, she became a heroine of the Communist Party. Thus, Communists through front operations began the civil rights movement in 1955.
    The Montgomery bus boycott was not a spontaneous event; it was planned. Parks had previously defied bus segregation laws. She was chosen to initiate the Montgomery boycott. King was chosen to lead it.
    Martin Luther King’s rise from obscurity to a godlike statue began with the Montgomery boycott. He conducted the boycott through the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA). Fred Shuttlesworth formed MIA. Bayard Rustin, King’s secretary and advisor, joined them in leading the boycott. (Rustin later accompanied King to Oslo, where King received the Nobel Prize for Peace.)
    In 1957 King, Shuttlesworth, and Rustin formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). King became its president, and Shuttlesworth, its vice president. (Later Shuttlesworth became the president of the Southern Conference Education Fund [SCEF], a communist front.) Andrew Young was the program director of SCLC.
    Also, in 1957 King attended a workshop at the HFS where he spoke. He praised Audrey Williams, a Communist, and Myles Horton, director of HFS. King was a sponsor of this workshop.
    In 1959 King invited Anne Braden and her husband Carl to join SCLC. Both were Communists and leaders in SCEF. King also fellowshipped with James Dombrowski, a Communist and executive director of SCEF. Moreover, SCEF provided financial support to King.
    King supported Jesse Gray. Gray promoted the use of violence to achieve Negro racist goals. King's support of Audrey Williams, Gray, and the SCEF shows that King did not abhor the use of violence. Furthermore, King wrote the foreword to Negroes With Guns by Robert Williams, a Communist, who promoted guerrilla warfare by blacks. He showed no aversion to associating with Communists and promoters of violence. Contrary to his reputation, he was not a peace-loving man. King associated with known Communists and communist sympathizers and with communist fronts. (FBI surveillance under the direction of Attorneys General Robert Kennedy and later Nicholas Katzenbach, who succeeded Kennedy, shows that King was closely associated with known Communists.)
    King supported, sponsored, promoted, and otherwise associated with communist fronts besides SCEF. These fronts included the National Appeal for Freedom, the National Committee on Un-American Activities, and Highlander Folk School.
    In 1963, state and local police seized internal documents when they raided SCEF’s headquarters in New Orleans. Based on these documents, the Louisiana Joint Legislative Committee on Un-American Activities issued a report exposing the close relationship between SCEF and King and his SCLC and SNCC. Commenting on this report, columnist Holmes Alexander noted:

        It links the Fair Play For Cuba Committee, a Castro front, by common membership to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee and the Southern Conference Educational Fund. It ties Martin Luther King to Communist leaders like James Dombrowski, Benjamin Smith and Bruce Waltzer, all three under indictment for multiple violations of the Louisiana anti-Communist statutes.
        . . . It traces the Communist-led race riots, which began in the South and moved to the North, through a maze of names like Bayard Rustin and King which reappeared last summer in the march on Washington.[102]

    A 1963 letter to Lee Lorch, a Communist,[103] from Dombrowski showed that the Communist party lobbied for the Civil Rights Act and that King collaborated with them. The letter reads in part:

        As part of a massive letter writing campaign, we propose to place a full-page ad in at least one newspaper in each of these 15 states.
        We enclose a layout and text for the ad to be signed by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference; Dr. Martin Luther King, president; the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee; and SCEF.
        SCEF will raise the money. . . .[104]   

       Another 1963 letter, this one from Carl Braden to Dombrowski, also reveals King’s close affiliation with Communists. This letter in part reads:

        The pressure that has been put on Martin [Luther King, Jr.] about [Hunter Pitts] O’Dell helps to explain why he has been ducking us. I suspected there was something of this sort in the wind.
        The UPI has carried a story quoting Martin as saying they have dumped O’Dell for the second time because of fear that the segreationists [sic] would use it against them. He expressed no distaste for Communists or their beliefs, merely puts it on the pragmatic basis that SCLC can’t handle the charges of Communism.[105]

    Uriah Fields, King’s secretary during the early years, wrote, “King helps to advance Communism. He is surrounded with Communists.”[106]
    Soon after the King Holiday became law, Michael Parenti wrote a letter to the New York Times that stated, “What if communists had links to Dr. King? The three areas in which King was most active — civil rights, peace and the labor struggle (the latter two toward the end of his life) — are also areas in which U.S. Communists have worked long and devotedly.”[107] Parenti, who was a frequent contributor to Political Affairs, an official magazine of the Communist Party, shows that the civil rights movement is a communist movement and that King was a frontman for the Communist Party.
    Senator Jesse Helms remarked in the Congressional Record:

    . . . there is no evidence that Martin Luther King was a member of the Communist Party, but the pattern of his activities and associations in the 1950s and 1960s show clearly that he had no strong objection to working with and even relying on Communists or persons and groups whose relationships with the Communist Party were, at the least, ambiguous. It should be recalled that in this period of time (far more than today) many liberal and even radical groups on the left shared a strong awareness of and antipathy for the anti-democratic and brutal nature of Communism and its characteristically deceptive and subversive tactics. It is doubtful that many American liberals would have associated or worked with many of the persons and groups with whom King not only was close but on whom he was in several respects dependent. These associations and, even more, King’s refusal to break with them, even at the expense of public criticism and the alienation of the Kennedy Administration, strongly suggest that King harbored a strong sympathy for the Communist Party and its goals.[108]

    Although he was not a member of the Communist Party, King was a Marxist and an advocate of political, social, and economic egalitarianism. He told his SCLC staff, “We must recognize that we can’t solve our problems now until there is a radical redistribution of economic and political power.”[109]
    King was a powerful promoter and advocate of the Negro Revolution. In a 1968 interview, he stated:

America is deeply racist and its democracy is flawed both economically and socially. . . . the black revolution is much more than a struggle for the rights of Negroes. It is forcing America to face all its interrelated flaws — racism, poverty, militarism, and materialism. It is exposing evils that are rooted deeply in the whole structure of our society. It reveals systemic rather than superficial flaws and suggests that radical reconstruction of society itself is the real issue to be faced.[110]

    In 1967 he told his SCLC staff:

For the last twelve years we have been in a reform movement. . . . But after Selma and the voting rights bill we moved into a new era, which must be an era of revolution. I think we must see the great distinction here between a reform movement and a revolutionary movement [which would] raise certain basic questions about the whole society. . . . this means a revolution of values and of other things.[111]

    Congressman John Ashbrook said before the House of Representatives, “King has consistently worked with Communists and has helped give them a respectability they do not deserve.”[112] Ashbrook “found King to be an apostle of violence and lawlessness, a racist, a power-hungry tyrant, an associate of ‘the most radical elements in our society,’ an individual who ‘has done more for the Communist Party than any other person of this decade.’ Ashbrook described King’s methodology as ‘criminal conduct and conspiracy, not civil disobedience.’”[113] Ashbrook was privy to many confidential reports on King.
    William Hoar described King as “a notorious libertine who was trained, backed, and advised by top Communists to provoke violence and build racial hatred as efficiently as any Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.”[114]
    If one were to judge King by his character instead of his race, one would find him as anti-white, anti-freedom, anti-American, anti-morality, anti-free-market economy, anti-Western Civilization, and anti-South.
 [Editor's note: The list of references in the original are omitted.]

Endnotes --- Continued

101. Henry Makow, “Rosa Parks & Our Communist Corporate Elite,” Dec. 1, 2010, http://www.henrymakow.com/001228.html, accessed Dec. 8, 2010.

102. Stang, It’s Very Simple, p. 127.

103. Francis and Helms, p. 32.

104. Francis and Helms, p. 32.

105. Francis and Helms, p. 33.

106. “Chapter 4. Communism and Racial Tension,” The Modern History Project, http://www.modernhistoryproject.org/mhp/ArticleDisplay.php ?Article=FinalWarn04, accessed Nov. 5, 2005.

107. Francis and Helms, p. 6.

108. Francis and Helms, pp. 42-43.

109. Francis and Helms, p. 43.

110. Francis and Helms, p. 43.

111. Francis and Helms, p. 43.

112. Francis and Helms, p. 44.

113. Gannon, I, p. 400.

114. Hoar, Architects of Conspiracy, p. 317.

Copyright © 2015 by Thomas Coley Allen.
 
Part 2

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